


while the waves flood in

by closingdoors



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 09:12:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5621680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closingdoors/pseuds/closingdoors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He kisses her. Every time, it is a gift. Every touch, every kiss, even just a look. All of this stolen time is a gift, and she wonders if this will make it into the stories about them. She hopes it does. There needs to be some happiness between all of this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	while the waves flood in

**Author's Note:**

> The old women get up and go away   
> With their fragile bird feet   
> While the waves flood in   
> Traveling naked in the wind. 
> 
> \- The Old Women Of The Ocean, Pablo Neruda

They've been on Darillium for two years and ten months when he tells her he found Gallifrey.

Perhaps she should hold it against him. For not telling her sooner. But it is so dark here now - she almost wishes for light, to see his face - and his voice is so tired. So old, even older than the low, furious places his last body used to go, falling out of a man older than she'll ever be with the face of a child.

He found Gallifrey. His home. And now she is laying beside him in a bed where the nights last twenty-four years, waiting for him to go.

"You've been there?"

He slips his fingers between hers. His eyes find hers in the shadows.

"You wouldn't like it. Dreadfully uptight," he says.

"Still... You've been alone all these years. You must have missed it."

"I did," he admits, and she almost wants to ask what brought on all of this honesty tonight. She is used to dealing in tricks with him. "I - I suppose I wish you could've seen it."

Outside, the towers sing. It is still as marvellous as it has always been. She's written copious notes on them - perhaps they will be her last archeological study. Those towers she's always loved from afar but never quite gotten close to until now. She closes her eyes for a moment and drinks this space between them in. He is on this planet, waiting for the moment that she must leave.

"Your home. Your people."

Gallifrey. He's told her so much about that planet, even when it had been lost. She opens her eyes and looks at him, tries to imagine him there, against all of that red. There is something about danger that will always be attractive to him, she supposes. And maybe that's why he stays here.

He shakes his head. "Your people too."

She laughs. "I'm no-one's people, sweetie."

The Doctor almost looks sad.

*

They do not spend all of their time together. She doesn't want to, either. She would go quite insane being around him constantly. However, it is a precious thing - to walk the streets and meet the people and the culture, to read books in libraries about planets she might have to visit alone, to walk on the same planet that the towers sing on - and know that he will always be right around the corner, not three galaxies away. 

It is always windiest by the towers. She watches them from a cliff face nearby, her legs dangling over the edge. It's rough against her skin but she tilts her head back, staring up at the night sky. Billions and billions of stars. There is a yearning deep inside of her to leave, to be rid of this place that should feel like a prison but isn't. To travel through those stars again, through other galaxies. But there would be no doctor. And as much as she does not need him... She would not leave. Not now. Not when they're like this.

"You're not thinking about jumping, I hope."

He sits beside her, a smile on his face. The smile on this face is kind. 

"All of this domesticity is driving me mad, sweetie."

"You're... thinking of leaving?"

"Don't you?"

She does not expect him to hesitate. He looks back over at the towers, weary.

"Course not. A night on Darillium lasts twenty-four years."

"It's been nine," she says, watching him frown. "I've never known you to stay put so long."

He reaches for her, curling an arm around her waist and drawing her close. 

"Guess I didn't have anything to stay for before this."

"After all of this time, really?"

He kisses her. Every time, it is a gift. Every touch, every kiss, even just a look. All of this stolen time is a gift, and she wonders if this will make it into the stories about them. She hopes it does. There needs to be some happiness between all of this.

*

They cheat, sometimes. When she is almost climbing the walls with the need to do something other than traverse the same lands, when he's in the middle of inventing a new sonic screwdriver (his fifteenth attempt since landing, and yet any he invents still won't work on wood). They don't go far - they help out neighbouring planets, its residents almost starstruck over The Doctor and River Song. They run. She grabs his hand every time, even though this body still insists he doesn't hold hands. He is far less gangly to run with now, and sometimes, she misses his past self. She's not sure whether it's a betrayal or not. She certainly loves this version of him just as much. She would not trade him. But oh, what she wouldn't give to have had a goodbye with that baby faced, long limbed, bow tie wearing madman. 

She and The Doctor collapse into the TARDIS. He throws his body against the doors as the sounds of the laser blasters continue, eyes wide. "Get her out of here, River!"

"I am!" She rolls her eyes, smoothly flying them away from the danger outside.

He huffs, walking over to the console. "Sontarans - They're not all that bad, you know?"

She raises an eyebrow. "You're defending a race of blood-thirsty soldiers now? My my, I really am rubbing off on you, sweetie."

"That's - I'm not - " He scowls, and she represses her laugh at the sight of those bushy eyebrows attempting to glare at her. "I met a good one once. Strax. He was a nurse."

"Didn't he die on Demon's Run?"

This Doctor - like all of his previous incarnations, she thinks - doesn't look at her when the remembrance of sadness settles across him. "Ah, yes. He did."

He is silent for a few minutes after, fiddling mindlessly with controls. If he keeps that up, they'll lose at least three bedrooms, the kitchen, and the tennis courts. She's yet to try out the latter, so she rests her hand on his, halting his movements. 

She doesn't remember ever speaking about Demon's Run with his previous incarnations. There had been the moment - there, with his past self - when she had brought him the news of who she was, lifted him back up again. But they had never spoken about the in between. How he had never managed to save her, Amy and Rory's daughter, all of that time ago. She doesn't regret it. She has learned to shed the horror of her childhood, used the skills they'd taught her for her own benefit. If he had rescued her then, perhaps things might not have happened as they have.

"You know, I don't think I'm quite ready to go back to Darillium yet," she tells him, watching his lips twitch. "How about we go see if those rumours about Slitheen invading Orlijak are true?"

Later, when she takes his hand to run, he does not complain.

*

They lay on a blanket beneath the stars, Darillium's skies stretching ahead of them. The towers are yet to sing tonight, for the third night in a row, but as the breeze rustle her curls across her shoulders and one of his hands reaches out to drift against the skin there, she finds the moment is rather complete without it.

"Have I ever told you that you have magnificent hair?"

River laughs, shifting to look over at him. "Since when were you bothered about hair that isn't ginger?"

"One day I will be ginger, you mark my words, River Song," he tells her seriously. "Amelia had exactly the kind I wanted. Imagine, you could... could've inherited that."

She props herself up on her shoulder, looking down at him. There are many versions of herself that she will never live as now, stuck in this one body. It isn't something that she thinks she misses. She's two hundred and twelve, now. This body shows no signs of giving up just yet. How many years is it that she'll have without him? She will have adventures, of course. Perhaps their parting from one another is just another reason that she doesn't miss the regenerations she gave up for him.

So many lives. All of that time. It would just become lonely. She'll never really understand how he does it.

"How many versions of you were there before this one?" He asks her gently, twisting one of her curls around his index finger.

"Two. I was barely older than a toddler in New York after I escaped the spacesuit," she admits, his ridiculous eyebrows furrowing at that. "And then, of course, there was Mels."

He smiles. "River Song. Always a hell raiser."

She leans down, kisses him softly, a contradiction. Yes. Always a hell raiser. Does he not know that the lives she has lived have been good ones? The first one brought her strength, the second one her parents. This third one has been the best one of all. 

She's glad it is her final one.

*

Late one night, fifteen years into their stay on Darillium, she slips from their bed where he sleeps soundly. It is almost as if the TARDIS expects her.

"Hello, mother," she murmurs, trailing her hands across the console. Guilt still pinches somewhere low inside of her, thinking of her biological mother, that flash of red hair that she always sees behind her eyelids if she dares even look back on those memories. But then there's the warm presence of the TARDIS against the edges of her mind, reassuring. Always knowing, always telling her, it's okay. This is okay.

The engines hum softly and River wiggles her bare feet against the floor. After Darillium, she will not only lose him. She will lose the TARDIS, the last place that felt like home, the place that always felt like her mother and father were just around the corner, waiting to join them both on another adventure.

What will this absence feel like? The loss of her mother and father had struck her deeply, perhaps more deeply than she had even anticipated - she had been the one to encourage her mother to go, after all. Because Amy was always meant to be with Rory, wherever it was they wound up, because they were happy, and that was that. But her? Well. She can run through the stars like The Doctor for so long, but it doesn't prevent the melancholy from chasing after her. The last time she had seen her parents had been almost a fifty years ago. And that was okay, she was okay with it for the most part, because that was always going to be how this would end. They were human, she was not. 

She lets her fingers drift against the railings. A life without this wonderful blue box - that he stole all of those years ago from Gallifrey, and she has learned to steal from him. It will hurt. They call her the child of the TARDIS, after all.

"River?"

She turns, finding The Doctor walking towards her, eyes still heavy with sleep.

"What are you doing?"

She looks around. She still has nine years left. There is no point dwelling on the inevitable instead of enjoying the now.

"Talking with an old friend," she tells him, watching him smile. Slips her fingers between his. "But I think I should rest some more, that Cyberman last night really did a number on my shoulder."

*

"No - no no no no no no. What are you doing?"

River rolls her eyes, turning to him with her hands on her hips. "Spring cleaning, sweetie."

He almost flails. Flails! His arms in front of him and mouth gaping, like something his last self would do, as he stares at the bags of rubbish piling around her. 

"You can't throw that out! I need these things!"

River snorts, fishing the first thing she can from the closes bag. "Really, sweetie, you need the manual to a human child's toy?"

He snatches it from her hands, holding it to his chest while his manic eyes bug out even wider than she's seen before. "You never know when it'll come in handy."

Ignoring him, River turns, searching through one of the many storage rooms the TARDIS has created to hold all of the junk he's collected over his time. Really, when is he ever going to use any of this stuff? She understands the need for machine parts but really, he doesn't need seven copies of the same movie he's never even watched. When would he even have time to watch a movie, anyway? Even now, he can't keep still for more than half an hour. 

"Some of this stuff is useful, River. I keep it for a reason!" 

"Name one thing in this room that is useful."

He pauses. "This is a trap."

When she just sighs and rolls her eyes again, he drops the manual he was holding before and starts rummaging through everything. 

"There'll be something here that'll prove its worth, I know it," he grumbles, tossing an empty jammy dodger packet and his old tweed jacket over his shoulder. "And then you'll have to admit that, sometimes, you are wrong."

River tilts her head back, laughing. "Darling, when am I ever wrong?"

He grunts. This new - well, not so new anymore - version of him is so often grumpy. It's rather adorable on him, actually. Anger on his last incarnation had been terrifying. This is a welcome relief.

But then he pauses, something in his hands, frowning. 

"Doctor? What is it?"

"Uh, nothing," he says, clearing his throat. "Just - more junk - "

But she's already rounded the pile of useless objects between them to find he's holding that old, battered copy of Melody Malone in his hands. Oh. 

For some reason, she hadn't thought that he would've kept it, after reading the afterword. The book held too much finality. 

"River," now his voice is quiet as he stands beside her. "I'm sorry that he - the past me, I mean - didn't come back for you after."

She shakes her head. "I don't spend my days pining for you, Doctor. I've made my peace with what happened to them now. They lived a good life together."

"Still," he says. "They were your parents. I shouldn't have abandoned you like that."

"You don't like endings."

"No, I don't," he says quietly.. "But they happen anyway."

*

The end comes around, as it often does, too quickly. 

In the hours before the daylight rises, she feels jittery, a new and unusual feeling for her. Even his touch does not calm her now, she sees the same aching in his own eyes. What had she ever been thinking - being bored here? They have had more than the twenty four years promised because of their cheating, maybe twenty six, and still some stubborn part of her wants more. More of this madman and his blue box and his awful, heartbreaking memories. 

They are closer than they ever have been. Her diary only has two pages left. She thinks she knows what that means, but she's still not prepared for it.

The towers sing an hour before the sun appears. He cries just a little and she pretends that she does not notice, so that he doesn't have to quell it. It has been hard for this him to express himself like this, after all, and though she can feel her throat burning, she knows that she will keep her emotions at bay for fear that the tears will not stop.

As orange creeps over the horizon, she takes his hand. 

"Where will you go?"

The tears have stopped now, he only smiles, a little forced but still there. "Oh, everywhere, I'd assume."

"You'll find someone to travel with?"

His eyes drop down. "River - "

"Promise me," she says fiercely, the sunlight rising across his face now so that she can see him clearly. "Promise me you won't travel alone for too long."

He presses a kiss to her forehead. "Maybe."

It's almost terrifying. She used to know everything - the events that happened to him, the companions he would entice away from their regular lives, the ways that their paths would inevitably part. Now his future is unknown and murky to her and she will not be there to witness it.

She walks with him to the TARDIS as if a few minutes more will possibly make a difference. He lets the doors fall open, turning to her when he stands in the doorway. No more TARDIS for her. But she still feels her presence at the back of her mind, just barely, as if wishing her goodbye. 

"River," he says quietly. Almost pleading. She does not need more than this.

Her hands make fists in his jacket when he kisses her. Fierce and soft and reverent all at once. She sobs into his mouth, hating that she'd ever read those stories about the two of them, made them come true. 

"You'll be okay," he tells her, and of course he knows. This is all still happening now, and yet it has already happened to him already. He has already lost her. "Trust me?"

She nods, not trusting her voice right now. 

"Go," he murmurs hoarsely, nudging her away.

She straps the time vortex manipulator to her wrist, fingers trembling.

"It's a beautiful song to say goodbye to," he remarks, but his eyes do not stray to the towers.

River manages a smile, drinking in his eyes and the way he looks at her one last time. 

"I love you, sweetie."

And then she is gone, landing in a bar she used to love, where there is already a drink waiting for her.

And a man called Mr Lux.

 

*

End


End file.
